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3.15.2007

March 20-Linsey Abrams is the author of the novels, Charting by the Stars, Double Vision and Our History in New York. Her stories have been published in such magazines as Bomb, New Directions Annual and Glimmer Train. Her work has been anthologized in Editor's Choice: Best Short Fictionand Tasting Life Twice: Literary Lesbian Fiction. Most recently, she was a finalist for The Mississippi ReviewFiction Prize and a recipient of a Pushcart Prize. She has received many grants, among them New York State Foundation for the Arts. Linsey is founding editor of Global City Review. She directs the MFA Program at The City College. She will be reading with Ernesto-Mestre Reed, a native of Cuba, and author of The Lazarus Rumba and The Second Death of Unica Aveyano. He has received fellowships from The New York State Foundation for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives in Brooklyn.

MOVING IMAGE TO LAUNCH ‘FASHION IN FILM FESTIVAL’ IN NEW YORKSeries includes talks and screenings of Liquid Sky, Paris is Burning, Who Are You Polly Maggoo, Unzipped, Model and more

March 17-25, 2007Museum of the Moving Image will present the inaugural New York edition of the new Fashion in Film Festival, from March 17 through 25, 2007. The wide-ranging film series includes lectures, personal appearances, and screenings of features, documentaries, silent films, video art, and newsreels. The program is a collaboration between the Museum of the Moving Image and the new London-based Fashion in Film Festival. The theme of this diverse and dynamic program, curated by a team led by the Festival’s founders, Marketa Uhlirova and Christel Tsilibaris, and organized for the Museum by Chief Curator David Schwartz, is “Between Stigma and Enigma.” The Festival investigates how the moving image has represented and interpreted fashion as a concept, industry, and cultural form. Among the films to be shown during the two-weekend series are: Liquid Sky, the 1982 New York independent cult favorite, a science fiction story about alien visitors set in post-punk downtown Manhattan—in a rare 35mm screening presented by director Slava Tsukerman, cinematographer Yuri Neyman, and costume designer Marina Levikova; Paris is Burning, Jennie Livingston’s 1991 documentary about the downtown drag-queen scene; Fig Leaves, Howard Hawks’s silent comedy that transplants the story of Adam and Eve to the New York fashion world; photographer William Klein’s quintessential 1960s film Who are You, Polly Maggoo?, a highly stylized and satirical film in which a team of television reporters chronicles the life of a doll-faced model during a hiatus in her career; photographer Bruce Weber’s Chop Suey, an impressionistic and kaleidoscopic self-portrait and tour of the fashion industry; and a rare screening of David Byrne’s directorial debut True Stories. “Fashion has always been integral to film,” said David Schwartz, the Museum’s Chief Curator. “Both fashion and film are obsessed with visual style, modernity, and the physical expression of personality. We are very pleased to be working with the Fashion in Film Festival and its visionary curators.” The Festival will include a series of talks in conjunction with film screenings: co-curator Marketa Uhlirova will present the opening program, “The Enigma of Clothing,” with early films by Thomas Edison, Georges Méliès, and Hans Richter and contemporary video artists; film scholar Drake Stutesman will introduce the screening of Fig Leaves; film scholar Pat Kirkham will introduce Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, and co-curator Christel Tsilibaris will present the program “Shoes, Eroticism, and Fetish,” which includes a screening of Luis Buñuel’s film Diary of a Chambermaid. In addition to Marketa Uhlirova and Christel Tsilibaris, the guest curators for the Fashion in Film Festival are Roger K. Burton, Alistair O’Neill, Edward Barber, and Adrian Garvey. Fashion in Film Festival in New York is supported by the British Film Institute, Czech Center New York, exposure, Fashion Institute of Technology, Film London, and University of the Arts London.

SCHEDULE FOR ‘FASHION IN FILM FESTIVAL NEW YORK’ “The Enigma of Clothing” Illustrated talk by curator Marketa Uhlirova Saturday, March 17, 2:00 p.m. The Extinct World of Gloves (1982. Imported 35mm print. Jirí Bárta.) Ghosts before Breakfast (1928, Directed by Hans Richter)Going to Bed under Difficulties (1900, George Méliès) In a Hurry to Catch a Train (1901, Ferdinand Zecca)Enfant Terrible (2000, Anna-Nicole Ziesche)59 Positions (1992, Erwin Wurm)One and One Now Make Two While Before It Only Made One (2000, Marie-France and Patricia Martin)Chapels (Bernhard Willhelm) (2002, Diane Pernet)Warner Corset Advertisement (1910, Thomas Edison) A Week in Film (1947, Czech newsreel) Tough Stockings (1960, British newsreel)Total running time: 54 mins. Video and film. This program celebrates the secret life of clothes and the enigmatic qualities that emanate from the filmic treatment of their materiality. Clothes and cloth, when filmed independent of the body parts that normally give them meaning, are revealed as estranged, dreamlike, playful, and elusive—making them potent carriers of fascination, desire, emotion, and sensual pleasure.Musical score by Karaoke Tundra/Muteme.cz.

Rear WindowWith lecture by Pat KirkhamSaturday, March 17, 4:00 p.m.1954, 112 mins., 35mm. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. With James Stewart, Grace Kelly. Lisa Fremont, Grace Kelly’s fascinating and high-powered character in Hitchcock’s classic study of voyeurism, murder, and the fear of marriage, is based on the pioneering fashion consultant Anita Colby. Bard College professor Pat Kirkham writes widely about design, fashion, and film. Liquid SkyIntroduction by Slava Tsukerman, Yuri Neyman, and Marina LevikovaSaturday, March 17, 6:30 p.m.1982, 112 mins., 35mm. Directed by Slava Tsukerman. In this time-capsule cult favorite, with plenty of early-1980s fashion, a pleasure-seeking alien lands in downtown New York and gets caught up in a world of casual sex and heroin abuse with androgynous hipsters Margaret and Larry (both played by Anne Carlisle). Director Slava Tsukerman, cinematographer Yuri Neyman, and production and costume designer Marina Levikova will introduce the screening.

Fig LeavesIntroduction by Drake Stutesman. Live music by Donald Sosin.Sunday, March 18, 2:00 p.m.1926, 68 mins. Restored 35mm print from the Museum of Modern Art. Directed by Howard Hawks. This joyful satire suggests that fashion is the Satan responsible for the fall of (wo)mankind. Temptation is found in a decadent couture salon on “rue de la Fifth Avenue,” and the climax is a parade of Adrian’s designs. Drake Stutesman, editor of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, and author of a forthcoming book on fashion and film, will introduce the screening.

“Shoes, Eroticism, and Fetish” Talk by curator Christel Tsilibaris Sunday, March 18, 4:00 p.m. Diary of a Chambermaid1964, 98 mins., 35mm. Directed by Luis Buñuel. With Jeanne Moreau. Preceded by Paris: Women's Shoes in Lafayette Galleries (1912, Pathé-Gaumont), The Gay Shoe Clerk (1903, Edwin S. Porter. Music composed by The Wolfmen), Amor Pedestre (1914, Marcel Fabre. Music composed by The Wolfmen), Shoes Talk Too (1949, La Settimana Incom)Total running time of short films: 12 mins. Women’s shoes trigger amorous behavior and sexual fixations that can cause a breakdown in social etiquette. These films explore various routines of wearing and showing off shoes for the camera, focusing on notions of exhibition, voyeurism, and lust. In the Buñuel film, Jeanne Moreau is a maid at a country estate whose eccentric inhabitants include a boot fetishist.

Paris Is BurningSunday, March 18, 6:30 p.m.1991, 71 mins. Directed by Jennie Livingston. A surprise hit when it opened in New York, this documentary reveals the downtown community of black and Latino drag queens who invented “voguing” and competed in lavish drag balls that both embraced and spoofed the world of high fashion.

ModelSaturday, March 24, 2:00 p.m.1980, 130 mins., 16mm. Directed by Frederick Wiseman. Cinema verite pioneer Frederick Wiseman applies his cool, understated approach to examining the intersections of fashion, business, advertising, photography, television, and fantasy in the day-to-day lives of models at a New York agency.“Assuming a Pose” (short film program)Saturday, March 24, 4:30 p.m. Four Beautiful Pairs (1904, Directed by A.E. Weed for American Mutoscope and Biograph.); How Mannequins Are Made (Italy, 1941,Giornale Luce); Mannequins for Sale (1938, Pathé News); School for Mannequins (1944, Pathé News); Volume (France, 2000, Jean-Pierre Khazem.); I Feel (2005, Jean-François Carly/SHOWstudio); It’s Like Being (Belgium, 2003, Marie-France and Patricia Martin), Photo Shooting (UK, 2001, Jen Wu.); Smooth with the Rough (1944, British newsreel); Shelley Fox 14 (UK, 2002, Shelley Fox/SHOWstudio); Puce Moment (Kenneth Anger, 16mm).Total running time: 51 minutes. Video unless noted. Posing, dressing up, staging, and masking are at the heart of this program, which plays on cinema’s preoccupation with moments where reality meets fiction. “Posing” connotes not just a position or posture of the body, but also artificiality and pretense.

Lady with a HatSaturday, March 24, 5:30 p.m.1999, 68 mins., video. Directed by Elsa Kvamme. This portrait film takes a staggering journey through the life and career of the Jewish hat-maker May Aubert, who used her millinery skills during World War II to smuggle money from Norway into Canada.

Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? and CeilingSaturday, March 24, 7:00 p.m.These films are powerful commentaries on 1960s fashion and cinematography; Ceiling (1962, 42 mins. Imported 35mm print. Vera Chytilová) is an introspective essay, while Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966, 102 mins., 35mm. William Klein) is an uncompromising parody. Like Antonioni’s Blow-Up, they take a critical approach to the worlds of fashion and media. Both Chytilová (a model in the early 1950s) and Klein (an on-and-off fashion photographer) were fashion-industry insiders, and thus ideally equipped to launch into a thorough investigation of the subject.

Chop SueySunday, March 25, 2:00 p.m.2001, 98 mins., 35mm. Directed by Bruce Weber. Part self-portrait, part documentary, photographer/filmmaker Bruce Weber’s startling and unpredictable film about fashion and photography centers on the discovery of a young male model and includes a portrait of iconic fashion editor Diana Vreeland.

UnzippedSunday, March 25, 4:30 p.m.1995, 75 mins., 16mm. Directed by Douglas Keeve. Photographed by Ellen Kuras. “Think Eskimos!” screams the outrageous, extroverted fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, looking for inspiration to revive his career after several bad seasons. The film shows how Mizrahi achieves creativity amidst the frenzy of supermodels, celebrity friends, enemies, and magazine editors, and stages a fashion show that saves his sanity and his career.

True StoriesSunday, March 25, 6:30 p.m.1986, 89 mins., 35mm. Directed by David Byrne. With John Goodman, Spalding Gray. In his first feature film, David Byrne used actual stories from supermarket tabloids to create an exaggerated patchwork exposé of American life. The stylized costumes play a key role in expressing Byrne’s incisive, cartoon-like vision.

MUSEUM INFORMATIONHours: Wednesdays & Thursdays, 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Fridays, 12:00 to 8:00 p.m. Saturdays & Sundays, 11:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. (Tuesday, school groups only by appointment.) Film Screenings: See above for schedule. Museum Admission: $10.00 for adults; $7.50 for persons over 65 and for students with ID; $5.00 for children ages 5-18. Children under 5 and Museum members are admitted free. Admission to the galleries is free on Fridays, 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. Paid admission includes film screenings (except for special ticketed events) Location: 35 Avenue at 36 Street in Astoria. Subway: R or V trains (R or G on weekends) to Steinway Street. N or W trains to 36 Avenue. Program Information: Telephone: (718) 784-0077; Website:www.movingimage.us

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Literary Tuesdays7:30 PM FOLLOWED BY OPEN MIC

March 27-Paul Oppenheimer is the author of twelve books, three of which are poetry: Before a Battleand Other Poems (Harcourt); Beyond the Furies: New Poems (Editions Faust, Paris) and The Flame Charts: New Poems (Spuyten Duyvil Press). His poetry has appeared widely, in such places as Literary Imagination, The Quarterly Review of Literature and The New York Times. He teaches at The Graduate Center and The City College of The City University of New York as well as, frequently, as an exchange professor at University College London.